Norton 360 2014 is the very latest edition of Symantec's powerful security and PC management suite.

Effective antivirus technologies monitor the files you run, download and access, as well as monitoring program behaviour, aiming to detect and remove malware before it can do any damage.

An intelligent firewall watches your internet connections and blocks network attacks. And all on its own, too - you won't be hassled by complex alerts.

Browsing protection checks the links you click, preventing access to phishing and other malicious sites.

You also get a capable spam filter, a password manager/ form filler, network monitor, startup program manager, bootable repair disc, performance-related tools and more, as well as integration with various other Norton products: parental controls, mobile security, Norton Zone (a free cloud-based file sharing service), and others.

And there's also a PC TuneUp component to keep your system running at its best possible performance.

The most obvious change in the 2014 edition is the enhanced Norton Identity Safe, the suite's password manager. An improved form filler now supports drag and drop, you can search for logins directly from the toolbar, and the interface has been revamped in general. We're less sure about the new look - it seems more obtrusive than the old one, more complex - but there's also some useful new functionality here.

Elsewhere, there's improved behavioural detection, and if something gets through anyway, more reliable cleanup tools to help repair the damage.

Symantec is also claiming simpler installation and setup, although previous installs have been so easy already that we're not really sure how much they can be improved.

One area which has seen some worthwhile tweaks is performance, though. Norton Internet Security 2014 (the security component of Norton 360) apparently starts 15% faster than the previous edition, while scan time RAM usage has fallen by 100MB.

There are few visible changes, but Norton 360 2014's password manager is now more powerful, the accelerated startup time is worthwhile, and any improvement in detection and repair abilities works for us

There's a vast amount to learn, of course, and that's even before you start building your game. But there's plenty of documentation, tutorials, demos and sample projects to point you in the right direction.

The package is now entirely free, too - no annoying limitations, nag screens or anything else. Epic now only requires that you pay a 5% royalty after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. And even then, you "pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization."